The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

248 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

Asia. The result was that their language and script spread far
and wide; wherever proto-Chaldæan civilisation extended, the
[270] proto-Chaldæan language went with it. And along with the
language and literature there went also the theology of primitive
Babylonia. The names of the Sumerian divinities made their
way into other lands, and the dialects of the Semitic tribes were
profoundly affected by the forms of Sumerian speech. The
earliest civilisation of Western Asia was Sumerian.
But a time came when the Sumerian was supplanted by the
Semite. It was in Northern Babylonia that the Semite first
predominated. Here the empire of Sargon of Akkad grew up,
and the cuneiform syllabary became an imperfect means for
expressing the sounds of a Semitic language. From Northern
Babylonia Semitic influences passed into the south, a mixed
Semitic and Sumerian population came into existence, and
the Babylonians of history were born. The mixed population
necessarily had a mixed language, and a composite culture
produced a composite theology. To disentangle the elements of
this theology is the first and most pressing task of its historian;
but it is a task full of difficulties, which the native theologians
themselves not unfrequently failed to overcome.
The union of Sumerian and Semite created the Babylonian
with whom we have to deal, just as the union of Kelt and Teuton
has created the Englishman of to-day. Other races, it is true,
settled in his country in subsequent ages, but their influence was
comparatively slight and transitory. At one time non-Semitic
Elamites from the east overran both Babylonia and the district of
Susa, which up to that time had been a Babylonian province, and
founded a dynasty at Babylon which lasted for nearly six hundred
years. But, like the Hyksos dynasties in Egypt, it made but little
permanent impression upon the people; in character and religion
they remained what they were before. Nor did the irruption
[271] of Bedâwin tribes and other more pure-blooded representatives
of the Semitic race have a greater effect. They were rather